OPINION> Columnist
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OPINION> Columnist
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Groundless accusations signal looming trade protectionism
By Li Hongmei (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-01-05 13:17 In a Financial Times interview held immediately following the New Year’s Eve, Philippe Mellier, chief executive of Paris-based Alstom Transport, claimed that Chinese companies were offering trains for export using ‘technology derived from Western suppliers’. ‘Such technology is usually supplied on condition it is not used outside China,’ he stressed. In addition to his baseless comments, Mr. Mellier, whose company is the world’s number two trainmaker, also called for a Western ban on Chinese train imports, insisting Western countries should close their markets to sales of Chinese trains because China’s domestic market is closing to outside suppliers. Financial Times pointed what has come about so far underlined the growing tension in the world’s train-building industry over China’s role, on account of the fact that China vows to grow up to be one of the world’s most significant markets for high-speed trains, metro cars, freight locomotives and many other forms of rolling stock, and that Chinese manufacturers are also increasingly gaining orders and winning bids from the European heartland once monopolized by Alstom and other train-building giants like Bombardier Transportation, the world No.1, and Siemens, ranking No.3. Mr. Mellier was quoted in the interview as saying, ‘We’re starting to see Chinese companies answering tenders around the world with Chinese freight locomotives, some of them being based on transferred technology.’ And a similar process was under way with tenders to supply metro cars, he added. In response to the accusations directed at the alleged ‘transferred technology’ and ‘seeking orders in Europe’, which Chinese scholars as well as economists unanimously deemed groundless, they pointed this can in part reflect the Europe's rising sense of crisis and surging trade protectionism in a backdrop of the globe-sweeping financial storm; and meanwhile, it can also manifest a wide spread worry, hovering over the European Continent, about ‘made-in-China’. China’s domestic industry has been undergoing an arduous process of updating and upgrading throughout these years, and is developing from low-end up its value chains. The mode of domestic production has also been gradually shifted from labor-intensive to technology-intensive, a tendency which is desirable and predictable. Nevertheless, there is no need worrying about China’s still-fledgling domestic industry, which can not match the European Continent for technology and efficiency for the time being, let alone posing a threat to its European competitors. Understandably, the U.S-born financial crisis has also bogged down Europe in the dire straits, and the businesses on the Continent have thereby enhanced their senses of danger and crisis in face of the imminent turmoil, and trade protectionism will accordingly look up. But even this, to re-fuel a trade war between China and Europe will be the last thing the both sides are expecting at the moment, as the gloomy economic reality and globalization make them more interdependent with each other than ever. Alstom Transport, for instance, possesses 18 entities and institutions in China, employing a staff of nearly 9,000. On its official website, Alstom describes China as ‘the core of Alstom’s global strategies.’ A French expert on French-China relations remarked, pointing to the Alstom chief’s calls for imposing ban on Chinese train imports, ‘Alstom enjoys such an enormous market share in China that it is so absurd and short of common sense for its boss to say so.’
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